Lessons from Jordanian Roads

By Sayan Supratim Das MIA ’18

I walked out of the UNDP office to find Tanima, my kohl-eyed host, attempting to engage a cab. Futile attempts to find a replacement followed, and we decided to walk home under a sweltering sun. As we discussed the night’s film, we took the first turn in the neighborhood that brought us to a graffiti-infested crumbling building with “Refugee” inscribed in violent colors. I stopped to take pictures.

“I always thought Amman behaved like a well-raised child … Sanitized roads, affluent limestone homes, fleets of modern and vintage cars, serene communities. But if you walk around,” Tanima said while tying her waist-length hair, “you’ll find lapses like this.”

“For a city as old as this, it’s hard to hide scars of the past,” I replied taking another photo. “Remnants of a well-lived life,” Tanima remarked while walking.

“Are you alright? I mean after yesterday.”

“You noticed the writing on the wall?” she asked, as we took another turn.

“I did.”

“I’m alright. Didn’t conduct interviews today. Wrote cases. Quite a respite. But all of this makes you think.”

“What?”

“That it’s them today, could be us tomorrow,” she answered looking at her feet.

“It’s hard being a caseworker, right?” I asked Tanima who was a UNHCR refugee status determination officer.

“Try being a refugee … Makes our problems look small,” Tanima smiled. “But for a while, I wanted to work in the refugee resettlement side. It’s the happier side. These refugees now have status, and we can begin placing them in host countries to start new lives. Refugee determination on the other hand … Well …”

I looked at Tanima.

“The time it takes to decide on cases, the rejection … Takes a toll on us. Over a period, something consumes you. You become cynical. You become the devil’s advocate while interviewing because when refugees can’t articulate their claim, it gets to you. I got back to refugee determination here in Jordan, but sometimes I can’t draft cases after an interview.”

As we aimlessly walked through the labyrinth-like neighborhood, Tanima confessed to having emotionally pressed for her cases with her supervisors in her first years as a caseworker in India and Thailand only to understand that aligning with rules was perhaps in her best interest.

“The process is frustrating and the intensity with which you back your cases subsides. A lot changes between junctions.”

The mention of “change” took me to the Roman ruins I had visited in my first weeks in Jerash, where I wondered how despite the altering world, man’s wandering feet knew little limits. I reminisced how porous borders had fueled civilizations that began thousands of miles away and found roots in nations that were not their own, proving that the urge to live with no bounds was as old as life itself.

Tanima recognized this urge. But she shared a vital difference.

“The world must understand that no one wants to be a refugee. Imagine the difficulty in being an outsider in a host country?”

By then we were staring at a steep hillock that we had to climb to reach our apartment. Under skies that had begun taking colors of the evening, Amman, a city built on hills, brought lessons of life to our legs. Our winding and downhill paths till then had been lightly laborious. But the last juncture demanded we bend our backs, and brace to push our spirits courageously, something Tanima spoke about with passion.

“Even resettlement is difficult … One never knows where they are going. It’s not like, here, go to America, settle in,” she clapped her hands, “Khallas, yalla … Done.”

Her frustration was palpable, as was the strain of the climb on my face. One step at a time, one breath after another, our knees creaked, and our stomachs knotted as the slope became steeper. The silence between us was continuously broken by screaming vehicles, making me question the comfort of the driver and those who plied with them, wondering why they never stopped to offer us help.

Comfort perhaps makes us look past the discomforts of others?

Twenty minutes later, we sat on the edge of the road, overlooking vast stretches of Amman, daydreaming under the sun that had by then lost its vitality.

“The world doesn’t understand refugees,” Tanima said between deep breaths, clutching her waist. “Most of the Syrians I interviewed never subscribed to dreams of the West. They want to go back and rebuild their country.”

I turned away from her and looked at the tumultuous roads we had conquered that evening. The climb was terrifying when done the first time, and repetition never made it any easier. Sweat still stained us. Pain settled under the folds of our skin, furiously attemptin to immobilize us. Yet I returned to these paths for the next seven weeks. And Tanima remained faithful to refugees.

“We’re like doctors to refugees. Like doctors, there’s a distance we need to maintain. We can’t get personal. We’ve got to keep our humanity within professional boundaries despite prolonged engagements with refugees. Balance remains a struggle.”

As I scanned possible film choices for the night in our apartment, Tanima went back to her books with a commitment that could not be distracted. The next day she would record another collection of stories, draft another set of cases, and hopefully be able to save another family or perhaps two.

“What happened yesterday at work?”

“I interviewed a terminally sick young man and his family,” Tanima said quietly. “Don’t think he’ll make it … I still had to get a claim out of them.”

Silence flooded the apartment.

“The interview reminded me of an Arabic quote … ‘When elephants fight, it’s the grass that suffers.’ Will politicians understand this?” Tanima asked with a wry smile.

As Tanima went back to her work, I sighed and looked through the window to find someone climb a neighboring hill now draped under the blue of the night. I smiled, for that day Jordanian roads had revealed the virtues of long, arduous walks.

ABOUT THE RAPHAEL SMITH MEMORIAL PRIZE

The Raphael Smith Memorial Prize is given in memory of Raphael Smith, a member of the Class of 1994 who died in a motorcycle accident while retracing his stepfather’s adventure of motorcycling from Paris to Tokyo. The prize, established by his family and friends, is awarded annually to two second-year SIPA students for travel articles that exemplify the adventurism and spirit of SIPA. During this extraordinary year, the scope of the essays was expanded to examine the notion of travel during a global pandemic.

This story appears in SIPA News, published in October 2018.